Advice is offensive, not because it lays us open to unexpected regret, or convicts us of any fault which had escaped our notice, but because it shows us that we are known to others as well as to ourselves; and the officious monitor is persecuted with hatred, not because his accusation is false, but because he assumes that superiority which we are not willing to grant him, and has dared to detect what we desired to conceal.

Much mischief is done in the world with very little interest or design.

Nothing is little to him that feels it with great sensibility.

To see helpless infancy stretching out her hands, and pouring out her cries in testimony of dependence, without any powers to alarm jealousy, or any guilt to alienate affection, must surely awaken tenderness in every human mind; and tenderness once excited will be hourly increased by the natural contagion of felicity, by the repercussion of communicated pleasure, by the consciousness of dignity of benefaction.

From ignorance our comfort flows, the only wretched are the wise

You cannot, by all the lecturing in the world, enable a man to make a shoe.

The heroes of literary history have been no less remarkable for what they have suffered than for what they have achieved.